Follow Us on Google
• Tasks Gov Matawalle to provide evidence on $2m bribery allegation against EFCC boss
Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), yesterday, gave reasons it feels former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, is not fit to occupy the seat of the Senate President in the yet-to-be inaugurated 10th National Assembly.
HURIWA also said that the allegation by Zamfara State governor, Bello Matawalle that the EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa demanded $2 million bribe from him to drop his investigation over N70 billion alleged heist of public funds must be investigated just as the rights group charged the accuser to produce and publish irrefutable evidence of his allegation against the EFCC chairman so that the civil rights community would stage massive protests to force President Muhammadu Buhari to suspend and investigate him.
HURIWA said that if on the other hand the governor has no evidence, the EFCC chairman should press libelous charge against the governor soon after he loses immunity from prosecution on May 29.
HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said that the All Progressives Congress (APC) should not endorse graft by continuing with Akpabio as its preferred candidate for the number three position in the country.
The group said that Akpabio should be immediately probed just like the EFCC is already investigating the Zamfara State governor, Matawalle, over alleged N70 billion fraud.
The group said that its opposition to Akpabio was based on the fraud case filed against him in 2018 by the EFCC, as well as his alleged mismanagement of funds in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), where he served as the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs. Akpabio has since denied all these allegations.
Onwubiko said: “Nigerians should resist the plot to impose him as Senate President through protest and other civil, but constitutional means. Akpabio becoming Senate President is the end of legislative autonomy in Nigeria and the end of separation of powers and the end of EFCC/ICPC.”
